persuade a generally educated audience of your thesis about Barthes’ argument and the influence of digital photography and/or social media
Essay Instructions
Essay 4 (E4) is a persuasive essay using Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida as the central
component. The purpose is to persuade a generally educated audience of your thesis about
Barthes’ argument and the influence of digital photography and/or social media or one of the
other topics listed later in this prompt. Additionally, this essay calls for outside, academic
sources; use at least 3 outside, academic sources and no more than 5 sources. Make sure these
are appropriate sources—Anthony Weston’s A Rulebook for Arguments can help with this.
Suitable sources may come from EBSCO, JSTOR, and Mirror of Race at mirrorofrace.org. Suitable sources may come from EBSCO, JSTOR, and Mirror of Race at mirrorofrace.org. As
usual, use MLA style formatting: 1inch margins, typed, double-spaced, no extra spacing between
paragraphs and heading lines, easy to read font style (e.g., Times New Roman or Arial), 12 point
font size, etc. This essay must be 5 pages minimum.
The first task of E4 is to summarize, explain, and analyze Barthes’ argument. Here, talk
about the studium and the punctum. Be careful because auto correct likes to change these words.
Also, discuss time and death in this section. Photos from Barthes’ book or other photos may be
utilized; however, the pictures will not count in the page count. Be sure to use quotes and
paraphrases from the reading throughout this essay. The in-text citations must be done properly
for both the direct quotes and paraphrases. Remember to cite Barthes on the Works Cited page and any photograph chosen not in Barthes’ book, refer to the MLA Handbook.
Task number two is to choose which topic(s) to address since Barthes brings many to
light. These notions overlap; thus, talking about some or all of them may be necessary. Provided
in the Modules are some videos, essays, and articles to help with E4. The following are some
directions to take:
- a) the affect of digital photography and/or social media on Barthes argument
- b) truth in photographs, referring to Barthes “this has been” (79) and “that has been” (77)
- c) equalization or democratization of photographs/information/content/
communication/visibility through photography and social media and/or digital
photography, Fried’s article from Mirror of Race may be helpful here—do photos
equalize people, as Frederick Douglass believed; also, does social media and/or the
digitization of photographs and photography equalize photographs/information/
content/communication/visibility?
- d) time, death, and/or history
- e) connection to others and/or history
- f) the perspective of the photographer, which Barthes does not really spend time
examining
In this essay, find 3-5 additional academic sources. You may use the videos, essays, and articles as outside sources. At least one of outside sources must be a written source—either a book, article, or essay. Be sure to cite properly within the text and on the Works Cited page.
